Openness in Adoption

I recently read a report about openness in adoption. The study, published by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, presented the findings from a survey of 100 infant adoption programs in the U.S. regarding their practices around openness in adoption. The first thing to know (which I didn't) is that adoptions fall somewhere on a spectrum, from completely closed (i.e., no contact between birth and adoptive parents and little if any knowledge of the parties about each other) to completely open (i.e., ongoing contact among those involved, including the child). Mediated adoptions fall somewhere in between the two.

Research shows that most private adoptions of infants in the U.S. involve some level of openness. This does not come as a surprise to me at all because the only adoptions that do not fall into this category would be adoptions where the birth parent either does not assist at all or has very little input in placing the child and may not know much, if anything, about the adoptive parents. A study from 2009 reports that there is continuing contact between adopted children and their birth relatives in about two-thirds of families who adopt privately.

Birth parents, who hold all of the cards in a private infant adoption, get to call the shots to some degree. This issue may or may not affect our family, depending on what type of adoption we end up pursuing (adopting through foster care situations happens when parental rights are terminated through the judicial system while international adoptees tend to come from orphanages and the birth parents are not in the picture anymore for one reason or another).

My main priority would be the adopted child and whether contact (at some level) is beneficial to the child or not. I believe birth parents and adoptive parents have to put the child's best interest, and not their own, first. Not being adopted myself, I don't know how I would feel. My guess is that each adopted child is different. I imagine that some children have lingering questions but aren't too concerned about their birth parents while others need the information to come to terms with their own adoption. At a minimum I think I would want to be able to give my adopted child (at an appropriate age of course) information, pictures, letters, etc. from their birth parent(s) should they want that information at some point in life. I also don't think I would have a problem sending occasional pictures and updates to the birth parent(s), with the adoption agency acting as an intermediary. Beyond that, I honestly don't know. Since we are only in the beginning stages of this process, we do not know yet if this question will be one that has to be answered, but it's definitely something that I felt warranted some discussion, whether it ends up affecting our family personally or not.

To read more, you can find the full report located at http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/publications/2012_03_OpennessInAdoption_ExecSum.pdf